The Smithsonian Just Started a Kickstarter to Save Neil Armstrong's Spacesuit

While Kickstarter is sometimes used for student films, fart detectors, and vaporware, there are some really great ones out there. The National Air and Space Museum launched a Kickstarter to restore one of the most priceless (and fragile) artifacts of the space age: Neil Armstrong's suit from the Apollo 11 mission.

While the suits are designed to withstand harsh, airless environments, they weren't built to last over time. Armstrong's suit currently sits in a climate-controlled Smithsonian facility, but it's too fragile to display. Today, 46 years to the day that the first man walked on the moon, the Smithsonian is using its first Kickstarter campaign in an attempt to restore the suit, hoping to raise $500,000.

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So why a Kickstarter for a federally funded museum? Well, as the page says:

Federal appropriations provide the foundation of the Smithsonian's operating budget and support core functions, such as building operations and maintenance, research, and safeguarding the collections. Projects like Reboot the Suit aren't covered by our federal appropriations, which means we can only undertake them if we can fund them some other way.

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The Kickstarter will pay for the spacesuit's restoration, preparation for it to be displayed at the museum, and digitization of the suit, allowing people all over the world to find the minute details and moon dust on the outfit. "Armstrong's spacesuit requires conservation to stop current deterioration and a state-of-the-art display case that will mimic the climate-controlled environment where it is currently being safeguarded," the campaign's page says.

The museum is working on other 3D scanning projects as well, so this is the latest part in an effort to create a digital Smithsonian. The pledges range anywhere from $1 to $10,000; anyone who gives the latter will get a behind-the-scenes tour of the Udvar-Hazey Center, where the really, really big spaceships and aircraft are stored.